LEWISTOWN, Ill. — After 15 years of anticipation, Joe B. Miller does not have to wait any longer to celebrate his first national midget victory.
In the Xtreme Outlaw Canton Clash opener at Spoon River Speedway on Friday night, Miller made the last-minute decision to pilot Thomas Meseraull’s No. 7x Engler Machine and Tool Midget toward a flag-to-flag win with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota.
It was a big night for Miller, who also won the MOWA winged sprint car feature that concluded the program.
Miller got the best of Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports driver Gavin Miller at the start of the 25-lap feature as he took the lead off the high side of Turns 1-2 on the opening lap.
As Chase McDermand passed Karter Sarff for second, he chased down Miller through the bottom lane as the leader attempted different lanes on each lap to see what gave enough momentum to hold back the No. 40 Toyota.
When Miller got caught in the wake of lapped traffic with five laps to go in the feature, he had to improvise to block McDermand from harvesting momentum for a race-winning pass.
Miller held a 0.4-second gap with a lapped car to the middle lane that cut McDermand’s chance of trying a different lane, helping Miller finish leading every lap and solidify his first Xtreme Outlaw Midget win around the three-eighths-mile high banks.
“I kept trying to watch and see if they kept having the top dirtied up,” Miller said. “I knew some of those guys would be moving, and I didn’t know where to be, so I kept watching the lapped cars and seeing if the top was getting cleaned off, but I felt like I could keep enough momentum until about five laps to go, then I just kind of used them as a pick or block.”
McDermand finished the night in second place.
“First of all, I’m glad that we got a solid run,” McDermand said. “Just finally glad to be able to get another podium. We’re slowly gaining on this thing, but Joe could carry a little bit more momentum through the corner with a little bit higher exit, and if I got a little bit too high on exit, I would lose a little bit of ground. It’s like I got to him, but couldn’t really capitalize with the way the track was on the bottom there.”
Denney brought his No. 67 JBL Audio KKM Midget to a third-place finish as he maintains the series points lead by 74 points over McDermand.
“The shredders got too slick too quick to make speed down the straightaways compared to the bottom there,” Denney said. “It kept pulling me down the straightaway as I was sitting there spinning my tire, so I got in line for a minute and was searching around trying to find something different to carry more speed than just running the bottom. But that’s all we could do tonight. It was a good points night, super consistent still.”
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 7X-Joe B Miller[3]; 2. 40-Chase McDermand[5]; 3. 67-Jacob Denney[6]; 4. 97-Gavin Miller[2]; 5. 71K-Cannon McIntosh[8]; 6. 21K-Karter Sarff[4]; 7. 9U-Kameron Key[12]; 8. 98K-Brandon Carr[1]; 9. 67K-Colton Robinson[14]; 10. 72-Alex Karpowicz[7]; 11. 56E-Tyler Edwards[13]; 12. 5U-Michael Faccinto[9]; 13. 6G-Parker Jones[16]; 14. 94-Hayden Wise[11]; 15. 56X-Mark Chisholm[10]; 16. 92-Jake Neuman[15]
